'The Influence of Sea Power upon History' is never published

What if Alfred Thayer Mahan never writes The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783? What'd be the consequences for Naval Doctrine going forward and the build up to WW1?
 
What if Alfred Thayer Mahan never writes The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783? What'd be the consequences for Naval Doctrine going forward and the build up to WW1?

There would be a good chance that various naval personages, especially those outside Britain and the US, would be using their brains instead of trying to comply with a theory which had little to do with their national interests. ;)
 
There would be a good chance that various naval personages, especially those outside Britain and the US, would be using their brains instead of trying to comply with a theory which had little to do with their national interests. ;)
Uh who would that be? France and Russia OTL basically had their own ideas. For Japan, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary Mahanian doctrine was in their national interests. Everyone else was too minor to matter
 
Wasn't Willy 2 in Germany a big fan of him?

"Those poor French - they have not read their Mahan!" - Wilhelm II

Without him, well, I dunno. A lot of fin de siecle imperial policy was as much about prestige as rational decisionmaking. And battleships are always going to be flashier than subs and cruisers. It might not be that big an impact outside of Germany.
 
Geopolitics without Mahan is like biology without Darwin, the field would be totally different without it. Mahan came to reasonable conclusions based on the historical evidence available to him, but sea power's influence probably peaked around the time his work was published.

In the late 19th century railroads were beginning to turn vast, landlocked territories into an asset and provide a workaround for sea power and expensive canals. Mackinder's model of contiguous, land based empires with railroad-enabled military mobilization is a 20th century model. He overstated his case with predictions about Russian invasions of India that never came to pass, but his general model is largely correct.

The USSR and China are clearly eurasian railroad states, while the British empire was an older model of naval centric colonial empire that was on its way out. The US straddles the two categories, it needs a railroad system to transfer troops, materials, etc. from coast to coast of North America, but its distance from the other powers allows it to build up a massive navy and act like a giant island as well.
 
Uh who would that be? France and Russia OTL basically had their own ideas. For Japan, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary Mahanian doctrine was in their national interests. Everyone else was too minor to matter

In OTL Russia of post RJW was planning a huge naval expansion which was going well beyond the need to defend its coasts. the head of the Naval Ministry, Admiral Dikov saw the main task of the Russian navy in the geopolitical competition with the leading naval powers: "Russia needs a strong fleet to be a Great Power and it should be able to send it anywhere its interests require". Sentiment was echoed by a Foreign Minister, Izvolsky: "The navy must be free, not to be burdened in its tasks by a need to defend a specific sea. It should be anywhere Russian politics needs it to be." The main way to achieve these goals was a massive construction of the modern battleships. The naval program approved in 1909 involved the following:
On the Baltic Sea - 8 new battleships, 4 battle-cruisers, 9 light cruisers, 20 submarines, 36 big and 36 small destroyers.
On the Black Sea - 3 new battle-cruisers, 3 light cruisers, 18 destroyers and 6 submarines.
On the Pacific - 3 cruisers, 18 big and 9 small destroyers, 12 submarines.
And this was only the beginning: the later plans assumed further developments: in 1911 a decision was made to built 3 new battleships on the Black Sea and in 1913 one more battleship.

In 1912 a plan had been made to create a naval base in French Bizerta and to transfer there part of the Baltic fleet for the "strategic purposes".

If this is not Mahant-influenced schema, I don't know what is.

For Germany "Mahanian doctrine" hardly resulted in anything substantial besides huge expenses and worsened relations with Britain and during WWI its submarines and relatively small raiders proved to be much more important factor than its battleships and Mahant's pipe dream of naval supremacy being decided by a modern version of Trafalgar with the mighty battleships confronting each other (all the way to a glorious end) proved, at Jutland, to be a pointless wast of people and material: it changed nothing.

A-H as a naval power with a strategic reach was a pipe dream: getting their navy out of Adriatic would be a major task (which, IIRC, it could not accomplish during WWI) and they did not have a colonial empire to defend and/or overseas naval bases to support the strategic operations. Almost the same goes for Italy: it hardly could expect to compete with France on the Med and its colonial "empire" was too small to require dominance on the sea.
 
In OTL Russia of post RJW was planning a huge naval expansion which was going well beyond the need to defend its coasts. the head of the Naval Ministry, Admiral Dikov saw the main task of the Russian navy in the geopolitical competition with the leading naval powers: "Russia needs a strong fleet to be a Great Power and it should be able to send it anywhere its interests require". Sentiment was echoed by a Foreign Minister, Izvolsky: "The navy must be free, not to be burdened in its tasks by a need to defend a specific sea. It should be anywhere Russian politics needs it to be." The main way to achieve these goals was a massive construction of the modern battleships. The naval program approved in 1909 involved the following:
On the Baltic Sea - 8 new battleships, 4 battle-cruisers, 9 light cruisers, 20 submarines, 36 big and 36 small destroyers.
On the Black Sea - 3 new battle-cruisers, 3 light cruisers, 18 destroyers and 6 submarines.
On the Pacific - 3 cruisers, 18 big and 9 small destroyers, 12 submarines.
And this was only the beginning: the later plans assumed further developments: in 1911 a decision was made to built 3 new battleships on the Black Sea and in 1913 one more battleship.

In 1912 a plan had been made to create a naval base in French Bizerta and to transfer there part of the Baltic fleet for the "strategic purposes".

If this is not Mahant-influenced schema, I don't know what is.
That much is barely enough to defend its coasts given its opposition. Ottomans were going to buy 2 new Dreadnoughts, ergo need 3 or more to counter them, Ottomans increase plans, need to buy more. Similarly for the Baltic, the Germans had far more than 8BB and 4BC

That they were going to divide the Baltic Fleet says they weren't fully Mahanian. Russian Geography means they can't go full Mahanian, Black Sea fleet is trapped there, Pacific is fairly far from Baltic.
For Germany "Mahanian doctrine" hardly resulted in anything substantial besides huge expenses and worsened relations with Britain and during WWI its submarines and relatively small raiders proved to be much more important factor than its battleships and Mahant's pipe dream of naval supremacy being decided by a modern version of Trafalgar with the mighty battleships confronting each other (all the way to a glorious end) proved, at Jutland, to be a pointless wast of people and material: it changed nothing.
Germany's fleet was a giant political bludgeon. It meant to be something that the UK cannot ignore and thus would have to be neutralized with diplomatic concessions. The UK certainly did not ignore the German Fleet OTL. That politics ended up with the UK on the other side was besides the point of the fleet
A-H as a naval power with a strategic reach was a pipe dream: getting their navy out of Adriatic would be a major task (which, IIRC, it could not accomplish during WWI) and they did not have a colonial empire to defend and/or overseas naval bases to support the strategic operations. Almost the same goes for Italy: it hardly could expect to compete with France on the Med and its colonial "empire" was too small to require dominance on the sea.
Italy and A-H's biggest concerns at sea were each other. Geography means A-H can't do anything at sea without beating the main body of the Italian Fleet, and means that has to be the focus of both powers
 
Clausewitz didn't really deal much with naval warfare, though Corbutt could probably gain more influence outside of Britain.

Clauswitz does deal with naval warfare at the strategic level. That he does not overtly mention "naval" can confuse people, but then Clauswitz easily confuses people. One military officer remarked that a solid understanding of 18th & early 19th Century German philosophers was necessary for a proper understanding of Caluswitz. I can see that in understanding his language, even in the translation. I first read Me C at age fifteen & had a US Army Major as mentor for that. When I last read sections at age forty in 1994 I was still gaining insight from direct experience in military operations into his arguments. The breadth of principles Clauswitz addresses apply just as surely to naval strategy, or air warfare as to ground strategy. Perhaps were 'On War' a completed work, instead of a edited version of a manuscript in progress it might be less obscure or difficult.

I don't know if modern Chinas admirals or strategists have read Corbutt. A few years a USN officer raged in 'Proceedings' how China was closely following Corbutts theories in its latter 20th & early 21st Centuries naval strategy, construction, deployment,t ect...
 
That much is barely enough to defend its coasts given its opposition.

Not as the Russian naval and foreign ministers (and Nicholas II) saw it and this is much more important than yours or mine opinions. The fact that in practice all these planned Russian dreadnoughts either were not completed or proved to be pretty much useless is neither here nor there and I quite agree that Russia geography and many other factors made Mahan's theory pretty much inapplicable (actually, I already wrote this on numerous occasions). But this change nothing in how the things had been viewed and done.
 
In the late 19th century railroads were beginning to turn vast, landlocked territories into an asset and provide a workaround for sea power and expensive canals. Mackinder's model of contiguous, land based empires with railroad-enabled military mobilization is a 20th century model.

Eh, Hitler followed Mackinder, and we all know how that turned out.
 
Eh, Hitler followed Mackinder, and we all know how that turned out.
Yes and no. Geopolitical influence over eastern Europe doesn't need to translate into genocide against everyone who lives there. Germany's a land power, it has no reason to pointlessly antagonize Britain by building a naval fleet that will be outclassed or trying to invest in colonies that will be cutoff by a blockade in Eastern Europe.

The UK and France have their Empires, and the US and Russia have themselves, but Germany has central and eastern Europe. Spanish tungsten, Swedish iron ore, Romanian oil would be crucial parts of any self-sufficient alliance system. In a world of high trade barriers, Germany would provide guaranteed purchases for east European agriculture, while eastern Europe provides a market for Germany industrial goods. By the late 30's, the Hungarian economy was dependent on Germany, and a majority of the exports and imports of Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece went to Germany as well.

The Spanish Civil War was the test case for turning a country's economy into an extension of Germany's, Hitler's Shadow Empire by Paolo Barbieri goes into the economics of the civil war. Germany's lack of foreign exchange in the '30s was compounded by the prioritization of rearmament, so Hjalmar Schacht made do with a neo-mercantilist system of barter arrangements and informal economic influence to essentially buy mitteleuropa.
 
"Those poor French - they have not read their Mahan!" - Wilhelm II

Without him, well, I dunno. A lot of fin de siecle imperial policy was as much about prestige as rational decisionmaking. And battleships are always going to be flashier than subs and cruisers. It might not be that big an impact outside of Germany.
Yeah, but at this time a big impact in Germany has pretty significant consequences for the rest of Europe.
 
Top